


Ice Chips

by HandmaidenofAwesomeness



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Outertale (Undertale), Blood and Gore, Bone Marrow Eating, Bone Peeling, Hallucinations, Horror, Maggots, Outer Space, Outertale Sans (Undertale), Psychological Horror, Self-Harm, Sensory Deprivation, Starvation, autocannibalism, bone marrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:29:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27909772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenofAwesomeness/pseuds/HandmaidenofAwesomeness
Summary: You see, the thing was, Sans knew better.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Ice Chips

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Have a short story I worked on with the wonderful [ Wormy ](https://twitter.com/weirdwormy) doing an illustration for it. The [ Lattice and Cracks Zine ](https://twitter.com/Lattices_Cracks) is out now! It's an 18+ Undertail Gore Zine that was released in October that I participated in so make sure you mind the tags on this one! If you like it the FREE zine link is found [ here. ](https://lattices-and-cracks.itch.io/fanzine)

You see, the thing was, Sans knew better.

He stared at the crack in his femur, wrapping his phalanges around the dark crevice that seemed to gape endlessly wide between the two sides. He had no idea how long he’d been drifting, watching the only place he’d ever known vanish in the distance. The stars had lost their appeal as a source of wonder the moment he had fallen off the edge of the floating asteroid they called “Home”. Instead it left him with a gnawing pit of empty fear that was so much more than the listlessness he had grown used to.

When he had fallen, he hadn’t been thinking about anything but scrabbling for a handhold, his blind terror. Teleporting hadn’t even occurred to him until it was too late. He’d been locked in place, even as the sickening lurch of losing gravity made him cry out uselessly, losing what little oxygen he had to the swirling dark.

He squeezed the hand lying on his femur, restarting the dull ache it caused. His pinky caught on the tip of the shard jutting out into nothing. The blanched bone was stark and so much brighter than the stars around him, seeming to glow in the darkness. The crack was long and winding, so high up that it almost touched the cartilage starting at the top of his femur. It yanked him back to the present. With every move he made, there was a moment of slow vertigo as the stars shifted with him. Momentum was a horrible thing.

His thoughts drifted back to Papyrus as the ache subsided. Was he ever going to see him again? He didn’t see a way out of this situation. There was a heavy lassitude that wanted to take over his mind, to numb him to the reality of what was happening. Did it really matter what he did?

He distracted himself by hooking his finger on the bone shard, sending a sharp spark of pain shooting up into his hip that sent a flash wave of heat through his body after nothing but the endless, debilitating cold. He had nothing left to give, no resistance to the creeping stiffness that enveloped him as his joints filled with ice. Maybe that’s why he did it.

I need this, he thought, even as he started to pull.

Something deep inside his soul twanged like a plucked spider web at the first inkling of pressure-pain as the bone bent ever so slightly backwards under his hand. He found himself struggling to look away; a sick sense of fascination filled him as the bone peeled back, inch by inch, to show the hint of spongy, porous underlayer where the blood vessels twisted in and out of empty spaces. It felt… good. Satisfying, achy, like picking at a scab. As his rational mind cringed away from what he was seeing, he knew there was no going back. The interior glistened wetly in the weak starlight, blocking his view as the blood vessels ruptured gently and started to leak bright red beads of blood into the spaces left behind.

The blood froze into tiny glittering crystals as soon as it leaked from his veins, reminding Sans of minerals dug out of Home. They were the same color, deep maroon in the center and edging towards pink on the outside. It was pretty. He reached out his other hand and closed his fist around the beads of blood as they started to float away. They squeezed between his fingers, semi-congealed, staining his phalanges.

The worst part about this whole situation wasn’t the cold or the pain or the way he could feel his sanity slowly crumbling. It was the absence. Not in emotion, though he wished he had something as comforting as numbness to lean on. But he couldn’t hear anything, he had no air to breathe, and the eddy of stars around him had dimmed into visual background noise. He couldn’t hear his soul beating, though he could feel its fluttering pulse. The dissonance of what he should be experiencing and the nothing was constantly jarring.

Like when the sliver of bone he was pulling on snapped off. There should have been a wet crack, the tinkle of ice clicking against itself, a hitched breath. Instead there was a hollow, muffled pop that reverberated up his leg, almost too much after so long. The sides of his head tingled, replaying the “sound” it made. It should have given him the relief he was looking for. It should have been enough. The shard slipped out of numb fingers, orbiting into the nothingness with him. It crumbled into dust, scattering with the force of its own demise. He was struck with a sense of betrayal as he tried to reach out and missed. He was lost and angry at himself for feeling abandoned by a fucking piece of bone.

On a whim, Sans formed a tiny dagger of an attack in one hand, his own intent burning his hand with the force of his self-loathing. He was wasting magic, wasting energy. He needed to save up what he had so he could get back to Papyrus.

(Like he was ever going to see him again.)

Placing the sharp, flat side of the attack against his leg felt like another step closer to the ledge. The longer he spent floating, the more he frosted over. His joint had gone dry, making it almost impossible to bend, and now the ice was creeping onto the bone itself. The idea of freeing himself of even a little bit had latched onto his brain like a particularly stubborn leech. He needed this.

He slowly dragged the attack down the length of his femur, scraping the layer of ice off with a bone-chilling sensation that would have made him cringe in any other situation. Pain racked his lower half as ice chips and flecks of frozen bone drifted from the space his hands had been. He was so close to something he couldn’t name but craved with a ferocity he didn’t think he could manage anymore. He found himself trembling as he took the attack and wedged the point into the notch he’d carved out of the thickest part of his femur. His soul was pounding so hard in his chest, he imagined he could hear it.

He started to push.

He moved centimeters at a time, savoring the perverse, burning pain that bloomed across his nervous system like blood in water. He felt warm, like he could crack open the ice around him. He could almost hear the creaking it would have made. But he couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. The stars he loved so much blurred together into tainted crystal tears. He was so hungry for something, anything to end this emptiness.

Something gave in his leg and his toes twitched feebly in protest. The pain swerved sharply into agony, almost unbearable, before gentling into something comforting and sweet. It felt like waking up from a nap to a freshly cooked pot of spaghetti. It felt like home. It was fading. He needed more.

He yanked the attack out of his leg, hoping to recapture that elusive feeling. He lost focus on the feeling as the world lurched around him. He couldn’t properly appreciate it, pinwheeling his arms frantically in an attempt to stop the sickening swirl of stars. Closing his eyes made it worse. His head was ringing.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the array around him steadied into something he could bear. He looked at the attack in his hand for the first time and stared blankly at the small, black thing that was skewered on the end.

Sans squinted at it. He could hardly see it against the space behind it. He glanced down at the gaping hole in his femur, where he could more clearly see another poking limply out of the marrow. He eased his attack back in gingerly, completely derailed. He caught the edge of the marrow in a brilliant flash of heat. The worm, it had to be a worm, twitched. He felt it start to squirm. Sans lost control of the attack, retching helplessly.

The maddening ringing in his skull became deafening. Sans covered his acoustic meatus, knowing it wouldn’t help. His chest heaved once, uselessly, as he tried to cope with the sudden awareness of the itch inside his bones. It spread from the point of entry, a horrible cacophony of tactile noise that he had been so desperately craving, twisted into something he never would have wanted.

His back strained into a painful arch as the scratching intensified, his hands clawing at his eye sockets, hooking his fingers inside. His mouth opened in a rictus scream that made no sound. He pulled at his sockets until they ached, until something gave and wet warmth spread across his fingers, slowly at first, then filling his vision. It wasn’t blood, it wasn’t the right color.

And everything stopped.

Sans opened his eyes, blinking away frozen tears. The stars winked at him in all directions. His hands were in front of him, holding the attack he'd dissipated. He stared down at the hole in his femur, marrow showing from the mouth of the wound like a mangled tongue. He didn’t see anything black, but there was a phantom echo in his leg of the incessant itchiness that had him gripping his attack in preparation. For what he didn’t know.

The prickling didn’t fade. It stayed the same, a shallow reverberation of something crawling inside his marrow that had no end. He searched the hole in his femur extensively, but didn’t see anything besides his own marrow. He jabbed the attack back in, desperately trying to stifle the feeling. He felt the crunch of ice giving way as his vision whited out. The furious bloom of blood that floated out was the color of rancid meat, darker than before. It spurted out in globs where his attack dug in.

He tilted the attack, scraping it down the length of the damage. He’d find the source and dig it out if he had to. His hand jerked as he moved, pangs of pain washing over him like a fever. He pulled the attack out slowly once he reached the end, looking obsessively for even a hint of black. All he saw were soft chunks of marrow lining the razor edge. He didn’t see anything but he could still feel them, rasping oh so softly against his oversensitive nerves.

His soul ached in his chest. It was beating too quickly, like a demented butterfly trying to escape its cage. How long had he been out here? He was going to dust out here, where no one could find him. He’d just scatter to pieces when his magic lost form. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe he’d rather dust than be eaten alive by-

Something moved on the end of his attack.

Sans raised the attack to his mouth before he could think. He didn’t even hesitate before leaping off the cliff in desperation.

He scraped his teeth on the attack as he bit down. He tasted heavy, savory stew. He could feel the irony tang on the back of his tongue. When he chewed, bits of it cracked beneath his teeth. He felt more tears freezing at the corners of his eyes, his soul suddenly clenching with hunger. For a moment everything else faded.

It was heaven.

And all at once it went wrong.

The texture was gritty and soft, like eating dirt and sour milk, congealed into wet lumps. It tasted like dried blood clots and thick, rich, rotten meat. He tried to scrape the remnants clinging to his teeth but all he managed was a hitched sob that made no noise. His magic incorporated the marrow into his system and his bones suddenly sang with that tiny bit of extra nourishment. He was consumed with the need for more, more, more.

He formed his tongue and licked off the traces he missed, cutting his tongue open and adding the taste of fresher blood to the euphoria he was experiencing. When he dug back in for more, he barely even noticed the pain, carving out a hefty chunk and shoving it into his mouth all at once. The wad of marrow practically melted in his mouth, leaving him empty. He pried off a piece of bone in a frenzy, hardly noticing it snap off and crumble away, focused on getting to the deliciousness inside.

Why not keep going? Why not rip off his whole leg and suck it dry like an oyster shell? Why the hell not?

His chest heaved in a sick parody of a laugh as he raised the attack to finish what he started. To keep picking away at himself until he lost all control. He convulsed, his cheeks aching in protest as he felt his sanity snap like a rubber band.

He couldn’t see himself smile.


End file.
